


White Pants

by Signel_chan



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: F/F, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:20:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25963513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Signel_chan/pseuds/Signel_chan
Summary: Kaede falls in love with a pair of white pants at the store, and Maki can't stand them (but she can agree her girlfriend looks good in them).
Relationships: Akamatsu Kaede/Harukawa Maki
Comments: 2
Kudos: 27





	White Pants

In Maki’s opinion, the pair of pants should have been left on the clearance rack where Kaede had found them, because they seemed like bad news from the start. They were bright white, as if they’d been bathing in bleach up until they’d been hung up, and the one splash of color on them was a gaudy embellishment on one of the back pockets of a hummingbird, which made no sense to either of the women. “They’re super cheap, though,” Kaede pointed out after finding the tag and seeing how low they’d been marked down, “and they say they’re my size so…wanna see how bad they look when I wear them?”  
Already deeming the pants a disaster, Maki gave the question a few seconds before answering. “I mean, what’s the worst that can happen? We get a couple chuckles out of this, then put them back and never think of them again?”

The real worst that could happen was Kaede falling in love with the pants, and deep down they both knew that, yet she still tried them on for the fun of it. When she came out of the fitting room she looked in awe of how well they sat on her, hugging her hips and thighs and staying close to her legs over her calves and to her ankles, the hem at the perfect length for a pair of pants. “I don’t know, I kinda want them,” she admitted, turning around so that her girlfriend could get the full perspective of how the pants fit her, Maki feeling flustered at seeing how they defined all of the curves that Kaede’s lower half had to offer. “I’ll buy them, since I’m the one who’s gonna be wearing them. Do you like them as much as I do?”

“Can’t say I like them at all,” Maki replied, hoping her reaction wasn’t going to give Kaede the wrong idea. “They’re white pants, Kaede. What are you going to use a pair of white pants for? I bet out in the sunlight you can see through them, and do you want everyone seeing your underwear when we’re out?”

“Please, it’s not that bad, they’re actually made of pretty thick material. Or, well, at least the thighs were, that was the first thing I checked on them.” Beaming, Kaede did another twirl, catching her reflection in the mirror and bouncing in excitement at it. “I have to get them, Maki! I don’t think I can live another day without these in my closet!”

Biting her lip as she thought about how _hard_ it was to tell Kaede no when she was so insistent on something, Maki considered not saying anything at all and leaving her to make the decision for herself, but she really did not care for the pants and felt she’d be doing her girlfriend a disservice if she didn’t make that clear. “They’re good on you, but they’ve got to be on the clearance rack for a reason. Just put them back, you can always find better.”

“No! I’m telling you, these pants are calling my name!” Without waiting for anything else to be said, Kaede darted back into the fitting room and returned a minute later, the pants slung over her shoulder and a grin on her face. “I’m usually so wary about buying pants of any kind, so I’m definitely surprised I’m getting white ones from the clearance rack, but when you’ve got a body like mine, you get the clothes that fit comfortably, regardless of if they look the greatest.”

“I still think you need to put them back and move on, but…” Knowing she was fighting a losing battle with someone so headstrong and insistent, Maki looked up at Kaede’s eager face and decided it wasn’t worth the breath to try and fight for her thoughts. “I guess you can see how much you like them when they sit in your closet forever and never get worn.”

“Never get worn?” Kaede repeated with a scoff, as if the statement deeply offended her. “When we get home they’re going right into the wash, then I’m wearing them the first chance I get! I think I have a tutoring session tomorrow that I can wear them to, they’re not as professional as a skirt but I can dress them up with a nice blouse or something.”

Muttering under her breath about how ridiculous the situation had gotten, Maki didn’t properly voice any other thoughts there at the store, nor on the ride home, even as Kaede gushed and droned on about how much she liked the white pants. Deep down Maki knew that she didn’t hate them quite as much as she was pretending she did, but she certainly didn’t like them enough to think buying them was a good idea. They could’ve found a perfectly good home with someone that wasn’t Kaede, no matter how much Kaede wanted to insist otherwise, because those pants were going to be forgotten about and locked in the closet with all of the other impulse-bought clothing she’d collected over the years.

True to her word, when they got home Kaede was immediately ripping the tags off of the pants and throwing them in the washer, turning it on without anything else added to the load to keep the pants as pristine as possible. “What are you going to do while the cycle’s going?” Maki asked her, standing alongside as she started the washer. “Practice piano, I assume? Or did you have other plans?”

“Definitely piano practice, I can’t let myself get rusty just because we went out for some shopping.” Kaede gave Maki a quick kiss on the cheek before heading for where her grand piano was sitting in the center of the main room of their small house, the only piece of furniture that reliably got used in the room. Maki did follow her and chose to draw a stool from their kitchen counter (which they used instead of a table because there wasn’t room for a table with the piano present), so that she could sit and listen closely to the music being played as practice. Despite having known Kaede for many years, and having been dating her for a handful of them, Maki couldn’t say that she fully understood how playing the piano worked when Kaede was the one doing it, because whenever she gave the keys a try she couldn’t play as fast or as gracefully, something that her girlfriend always seemed to find endearing about her.

She was able to hear the washer’s cycle end over the sounds of the piano, and she hopped off the stool to go put the pants in the dryer before Kaede even knew that they’d finished getting washed. Maki rarely was the one to switch around laundry, given that she was barely too short to actually reach the bottom of the washer, without leaning super far into it, so she steeled herself for needing to get most of the way inside to grab the pants. It came as a surprise when she reached in to test and found an article of clothing brushing her fingertips before she was even standing on her toes, and the surprise turned to horror after the article was pulled out and it was one of her bright red shirts she wore for work.

“She didn’t check to make sure it was empty before she threw the pants in.” The words came quickly, in time with Maki’s mind processing what she’d just discovered. True to her conclusion, when she did lean over the side of the washer she found several of her other red shirts, with a formerly white pair of pants sitting among them, emphasis on the word _formerly_ because they were tinged pink with darker splotches all over when she fished them out. “Oh no, she’s going to lose her mind when she realizes what she’s done. How’s she going to forgive herself for making this sort of mistake?”

“Maki? Is everything okay in there?” she heard Kaede yelling, probably still sitting at the piano expecting for her audience to be there listening to her. “Do I need to come help you with your short little arms?”

“Nope, I’ve got it,” she called in reply, before cursing herself for going for her usual answer. It would have made things much easier if she’d had Kaede come see the damage right then, rather than leaving it for later, but going back on her decision would make Kaede worry something serious had happened and she didn’t want to cause that sort of drama. Instead, she got everything out from the washer and threw it all into the dryer, except for the pants, which she took to the bathroom and slung over the shower curtain rod, so that they could hang to dry. With that taken care of she returned to where Kaede had resumed her practice, and pretended that everything was as normal as it could be.

That changed the next time that Kaede stepped into the bathroom, seeing a now-pink pair of pants hanging up right when she walked in. “Uh, Maki, since when did either of us have tie-dye pink pants?” she asked, standing in the doorway while Maki, sitting at the counter trying to distract herself with her phone, pretended not to hear a word. A follow-up came moments later, after she’d investigated and found the gaudy hummingbird stitched into the back pocket of the pants, and she was running out with the damp clothing in hand. “No, seriously, since when did the pants I bought earlier turn pink?”

“I wouldn’t have the slightest idea.”

Kaede puffed her cheeks out, holding the pants up to see the damage, and because of how she was holding them at the waist with them fully extended, only the very top of her head was visible from Maki’s vantage point. “I know you know when this happened, since they didn’t just magically end up in the bathroom. So, tell me! When did it happen?”

“When you decided to throw them in the washer with my red work shirts.” It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t a truth that felt great to share, and Maki was almost glad that she couldn’t see Kaede’s face in that moment. “Guess it’s what you get for not checking.”

The whine that Kaede gave at accepting that she’d ruined what she’d been so excited to buy in the first place tugged right at Maki’s heart, but it was what followed it that showed that she accepted that she’d been the one to make the mistake. “I mean, I liked the pants because of how they fit, not because of what color they were, I can still totally rock these like this. If anyone asks where I got them, at least now I can tell them I colored them at home, instead of having to admit I bought them from a clearance rack.”

She dropped the pants from in front of her face and instead held them up to her body, and the same feeling that Maki had felt when she’d first watched her girlfriend try them on filled her from head to toe. “Yes, they’re definitely much nicer now than they were before,” she said, coughing to control her flustered state, “but I think that they’d look better elsewhere.”

“In the closet, I’m sure,” Kaede said with a defeated tone, before seeing the blush that had crawled its way across Maki’s cheeks. “O-oh. I get it. You mean…on the floor.”

The silence was deafening as Maki nodded, and all Kaede could do was comply with the demand she was being given.


End file.
